Making the most of The Great Outdoors:- Cycling- Backpacking- Walking- Camping- Caravanning & Travelling.
Currently on an Open Ended Full-Time Tour of the UK & Europe in 'Eva the Eriba' my Eriba Touring Troll 540.
Taking it slow because everyday is a holiday...........

Thursday, 14 February 2013

I'm just giving the others a chance to catch up !

Bikes and Boats-Bournemouth Seafront

Although I have had to step back from the bike for a few weeks, it hasn't stopped me getting out and about.....I have had plenty of time to walk along the seafront here in Bournemouth as well as further along the coast....Trying to maintain the fitness levels that I have acquired so far this year is of paramount importance so keeping active is vital....it would be so easy to fall into a sedentary lifestyle and wake up one morning and realize that I had become overweight and over the hill !! On the subject of hills....One of the best ways to improve your cycling hill climbing ability is to lose weight and improve your power to weight ratio, so putting on weight is the thing I always try to avoid like the plague.... The problem is, that if you have to cut back for a while on a calorie burning exercise like cycling, you need to keep a close watch on the balance between the activity levels that you are managing to achieve and your calorie intake...(as well as the right quality of food)I don't normally count calories as such...but I must admit that I am doing so currently.....If nothing else, my time off the bike will give the other guy's in Team 10in10 a bit of a chance to catch me up on the power to weight front.....JD is trying to lose weight...Since we completed our ride back from Edinburgh last year, he seems to have put on a lot of weight...probably caused by all the official dinners he finds himself attending....Hills always cause JD a problem...don't get me wrong, 99% of the time he gets to the top but loses a lot of time in doing so... He tells me that he would like to reduce his weight by about 42lbs before we get to the Alp's on our ten countries ride... so he really does have a big mountain to climb in more ways than one between now and then.As for the other riders Jon and Lorenzo, well they are working hard at improving their fitness levels with plenty of good solid base mileage.....It will be interesting to see where each of the guy's are in respect of their individual fitness levels when we get out for our first proper ride together which I am hoping (fingers crossed) will be in early March.... At that time I also hope to get a proper team photo taken and I will also be doing an introduction to each team member on this blog with a brief resume' of each riders cycling history.....Talking about the Team Photo..I have now set up our Team Fundraising Page and I have installed a button from this blog that will take you direct to our page....as soon as I have the team photo taken I will obviously add it to the team site..... Please click on the button and check out the page and read our 'Team Story'....clicking on the button does not commit you to a donation today, although I would hope that at some point between now and the ride, you would support our efforts with a 'splash of the cash'.... Cyclists Fighting Cancer is a fantastic charity doing really good work and one of the reasons for our 10in10 ride is to draw attention to the good work that they do.... I would just like to finish this post with my comment that is featured in our Team Story on the site...."As a cancer survivor myself I am only too aware of the difficulties faced by a diagnosis of cancer....for a child affected by cancer it can be devastating" Trevor Woodford (Team Member)